


i am done with my graceless heart

by manticoremoons



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Episode 2x14, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Canon, Time Skips, a wee bit, referred to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 13:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11358453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manticoremoons/pseuds/manticoremoons
Summary: Maryse's life is one full of promises.





	i am done with my graceless heart

**Author's Note:**

> I've been lowkey shipping Luke and Maryse for a long time, and 2x14 made me catch proper feelings. I've also been aching to write a Maryse study but none of them were coming together until this one. I hope that the non-linear ordering of the story doesn't confuse anyone, I liked how it flowed but it may not be the same for those reading it anew.
> 
> I cherry-picked liberally from the character notes for these two from the books, hence Maryse's and Luke's family backgrounds etc. **For those who aren't familiar with Maryse's** : she was born Maryse Trueblood. She had an older brother, Max (who little Max was named after) who was stripped of his runes and banished from shadowhunter society all because he fell in love with a mundane, which made Maryse and her family outcasts in society. I decided to take that (gleaned from Maryse's Wiki page) and what little else we know, flesh it out and make it somewhat my own.  
> Background ships are mentioned with some detail, I have my preferences, and I can't even be sorry. The death isn't a major character and is expected, but may be a spoiler for some!
> 
> This is unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own, unlike the characters - who are not. Enjoy.

# 

# 4

In the moment, she wants to forget every single lesson she’s ever taught herself about dignity and honour, decorum and respectability—

And claw Robert Lightwood’s eyes out. She wants to flay the skin off his face. She _wants_ to grab her broadsword from where it lies in its silver-plated ornamental sheath and stab him through and watch him bleed at her feet like the selfish, ungrateful, lying pig he is.

She does none of these things. Instead, she brushes her knuckle to her earlobe, a nervous habit that centres her. She swallows the stone at the back of her throat, and says: “I’m going to the bathroom now. When I come out, I want you gone.”

She doesn’t pause to listen to what he has to say—but hears the spluttering behind her. He has lost the right. The right to be listened to, to be believed, to be _anything_ to her.

 

 

# 1

“Okay, Little Bit, you have to let go of me now.”

Maryse only holds tighter to Max’s waist, the silver Trueblood sigil on his belt buckle digging into her shoulder. Maybe if she holds on tight enough, he won’t leave like the Clave says he has to.

His hands rest in her hair, and she feels his callused thumb pinch her earlobe the way he does all the time. It makes her smile through the sticky tears she’s rubbing into the cotton of his shirt.

“No, don’t leave, Max—please.”

He sighs, and she feels him bend awkwardly to press a kiss to the top of her head and then he untangles her gangly arms from around him and kneels before her.

His eyes, brown and mossy like hers, are shiny. There are dark rings underneath them. She knows that he has spent many nights the last week pacing in the upstairs study, arguing with Mama, asking Papa for forgiveness, begging Mama not to cry.

“I don’t have a choice, Little Bit,” he says. A smile like broken glass lifts the corner of his mouth when he says the name he’s called her since before she can remember. He’d always said she was so tiny and little, he could fit her in his hand. “You’ll have to take care of Mama and Papa, now, like you take care of me. Do you promise?”

Maryse ducks her head. “But _why_ do you have to go? Take me with you— _please_.” She loves Mama and Papa but Max, has always been _her_ big brother, her best friend, the only one she tells all her secrets to. She doesn’t understand how she is supposed to wake up tomorrow and pretend he is not.

“I can’t, Bit. I wish I could—and maybe… maybe I’ll find you after,” he promises half-heartedly, hope flaring in his eyes before it fizzles out like he’s thought better of it. There will be no _maybe_ and _after_ , that’s what Mama said.

After tomorrow, Max is dead. _Dead_. And Maryse is the only Trueblood child.

“Come,” he says, taking her hand and pressing their palms together, so their life lines match up like two puzzle pieces. “You and I, we’ll always be brother and sister, _family_. No matter what happens, no matter how far we are away from each other. It’s you and it’s me, forever.”

“Promise?” Max has never broken a promise made.

Like a noble knight from all the old stories he used to read to her, he presses a kiss to her knuckle. “Promise.”

She doesn’t know it then but she learns it soon enough.

Max is a liar.

 

 

# 5

“Alec told me what you tried to do, Lucian.”

If anyone asked her what she was doing here in the Midtown North precinct—closer to midnight than could be considered dignified or remotely tolerable—she wouldn’t know what to say. It was not like she could lie and claim she was ‘just in the area’ or ‘shopping at the grocery around the block.’ She’d left the Institute for a walk and somehow found herself standing beneath the luminous blue-and-white sign, she’d activated her invisibility rune, and crept down to the musty basement-level office pen where Senior Detective Luke Garroway’s desk sat.

At best, Lucian would think she was rude and presumptuous, at worst: plain unhinged.

“Maryse,” he said her name in a gravelly undertone, more laced with exhaustion than the irritation she deserved.

He slumped back in his chair, away from a desk cluttered with, presumably, case files and she counted at least two unwashed cups of coffee, a pair of handcuffs, an ugly papier-mâché dragon-shaped mug filled with pencils and pens. He looked like he’d spent a day and more staring at the cases in those folders, the lines around his face deeper and his whiskey-dark eyes blinking up at her as if he wasn’t sure if she was a bad dream or not. The navy blue shirt he was wearing was rolled up around his elbows, the top three buttons undone, and his holster loosened as if he’d gotten halfway through taking it off and then got distracted by something more important.

“I’d ask how you are but I’m a little confused about _why_ you’re here.”

“What were you thinking?” she asked, hands on her hips. It was easier, she found, to hide her awkwardness of being here behind outrage, however untruthful it might have been.

“I was _thinking_ that someone needed to take a damn stand and kill that monster once and for all.”

“The Clave would have _you_ killed if they’d found out what you did. And they’d be within their jurisdiction, you overstepped. You’re lucky Alec is so generous and forgiving. It wasn’t very… well-considered or smart of you.”

“Well, I’m sorry if the deaths of hundreds of my people makes it so hard for me to be ‘well-considered’ or ‘smart’ like you are, Maryse,” he spat her name like it was a dirty thing. “I guess it’s not in the demon blood.”

She flinched, an indrawn breath that sounded unbearably loud in the small space. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what, hm?”

She could feel the anger radiating from him, an impenetrable force-field coiled around his long, lean body. He held himself still, as though a single movement would impel him to explode or strike out at the nearest thing in the room. _Her_.

“Hm? You may have apologised for all the stuff that went down all those years ago, Maryse, but that doesn’t mean it’s done and dusted. It doesn’t make it _easy_ to forgive, and I won’t ever forget how you turned your back—.”

He cut himself off, his lips pinched at the corners.

A curdling shame unspooled in her gut. Because, she may never admit to anyone but herself but she knew that had things turned out differently in her life, even in her marriage, certainly with the Clave—she _wouldn’t be here_. She wouldn’t be apologising for nearly two decades’ worth of betrayal. She probably would’ve lived the rest of her days pretending she’d never known or cared about Lucian Graymark… _Luke Garroway_. And she would have been perfectly fine that way.

Out of all of their teenage friends, it had been she, Lucian and Jocelyn who’d been closest. She and Lucian, especially, given their lowly status in Nephilim society—Luke, all but an orphan, and she, the only (acknowledged) child of a dishonoured family. And yet, just like everyone else, she had turned her back on Luke when news of his downfall had reached Idris.

Sure, she’d had all sorts of reasons for it at the time. Good ones. _Rational_ ones.

But none of them justified that kind of betrayal. It had been silly to even think that a simple apology could cover it—that she had any right to tell him what to do or how to feel.

“I know,” she began, the whispered words squeezing out of her tight throat. “I _know_ that I don’t deserve your forgiveness or … anything. But I will ask for it nonetheless. We were friends, once, Lucian.” She glanced at her feet, her black suede boots stood out starkly against the pale linoleum. Scratching her left earlobe, she let out a wry huff. “I will never forget that you were the one who taught me how to hold my broadsword correctly in our classes back in Idris—that you were the only one who didn’t laugh that I was even trying to use a weapon almost twice my size.”

Luke snorted at the memory as if he can’t help it. “You were five foot nothing but I could tell even then you were stubborn as hell. Plus, I didn’t want you to use that thing on me once you figured out how.”

Smiling hesitantly, she offered a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know if I can ever make amends. But, I would like to try. If you’ll let me.”

“Why?” One word, asked with the weight of all the years and hurts that hovered like ghosts between them.

Smoothing her hands down the seam of her green tweed skirt—a colour she’d not worn for years but that she rediscovered in the back of her closet at the institute—she said as steadily as she could manage: “I guess, I started waking up and the person I looked at in the mirror wasn’t someone I liked or that I wanted to be. And, I can’t change what I’ve done or the choices I’ve made. Some of them, I wouldn’t, even if I could go back. But I can try to be the kind of person I’m proud of to the people I care about.”

He raised a dark eyebrow, a sceptic to the end. He’d not always been that way. When they were teenagers, Lucian’s heart had been the purest and kindest of them all, always looking for the best in people, _believing_ it even when too much evidence pointed to the contrary. Even monsters like Valentine. Or cowards, like her and Robert and the rest. “And I’m one of those people?”

“In spite of what you believe, _yes_.”

Luke was silent at that, that penetrating gaze of his on her, taking her apart so he could look inside and figure out the truth of her. It made her feel exposed and naked, she tamped down the urge to fidget. She knew he didn’t believe her, and she couldn’t blame him at all. When the silence had stretched on too long, she nodded in acceptance and made to turn and leave. It had been foolish to come here, she had been foolish to hope a few words could fix things.

“Maryse, wait.” She froze mid-step, a wave of something sagging in her shoulders.

She heard the scrape of his chair as he stood and walked around it, his heavy boot-steps coming to a stop a foot behind her.

Turning to face him, she tilted her head back. She’d forgotten how tall Lucian— _Luke_ —was. This close, she was reminded of not just that but how big he was all over, not many shadowhunters could match him. It had nothing to do with being a wolf, his muscles had simply grown to fit his height and frame, bulging noticeably under his shirt. She blinked and shook her head slightly. Noticing his muscles was… not _appropriate_. Licking her lower lip, she met his steeped-oak eyes in the scant light off the lamp at his desk.

“I don’t. Look, I don’t know if we can ever be,” he said, waving his hands at the space between them, searching for the right word. “Friends or whatever. But… I do know of a pub around the corner, opens till two. Join me for a drink?”

There was a patter, however flimsy, of hope when she said with a grin. “Sure, I could use a nightcap… maybe three.”

He laughed then, a deep barrel-chested sound that warmed her down to her bones.

 

 

# 3

Her mother is old now. The body, which had borne two children late in life and too many other battles, bent and gnarled with age. But it’s her vicious eyes that make Maryse draw back.

“It wasn’t enough that your brother did what he did—now you?”

“Mother—please.”

“All that effort you went to, just to get that Lightwood boy, and all of it for _nothing_. You are back where you started, little girl. Disgraced, along with the rest of your little _Circle_.” She laughs. It’s an ugly cawing sound, like a hawk swooping in on some small field mouse.

“I’ll fix it.” She has no choice.

There is Alec, who’s just started crawling, his serious eyes taking in the world around him, his chubby toddler-fingers picking up anything they can and stuffing them in his mouth. And there is another child in her belly—a baby girl, she’s sure of it. She has to fix it. The alternative is too frightening to contemplate. Her children don’t deserve to grow up with the shame she’s all too familiar with. “I promise.”

“Save your promises for someone who will believe them enough to care.”

Maryse shouldn’t feel hurt by the sight of her mother walking away from her, hobbling up the stairs of the family home in Idris with that clanging walking stick of hers. Trueblood women have never been soft or kind, she learned that early. But the smarting pain in her heart will burn like an ember for a long time.

The tiny, wet fingers clutching her ankle draw her gaze away from the now-empty stairs.

Alec, dark curly hair falling over his forehead, gazes up at her with a nearly toothless grin. “Mama!” he squeals—his first and currently only word, much to her pleasure and Robert’s chagrin—“Mama, Mama, Mamamamamama!”

With a tired laugh, she bends down and picks him up, a ripple of love filling her just to hold him close. Breathing in that sweet, comforting baby smell, she makes him the same promise.

“You are my chance, baby boy. I’ll give anything I have to protect you and your sister, our family,” she says, whispering into his downy-soft cranium. “I’ll give, I’ll take. I’ll kill. Just as long as you’re safe.” It’s a heavy vow, a dark one. Perhaps too bloody for the giggling bundle of every joy she has left in her arms. But she makes it anyway.

Unlike too many people in her life, Maryse keeps hers.

 

 

# 8

She watches her children, all of the people gathered in this mundane holiday party. What a strange family they all make. She leans her head back into Luke’s broad chest, breathes in the woodsy cologne with a trace of gunpowder and mint that clings to him.

Alec holding the little girl’s hand, watching Magnus perform a sparkling magic trick with a wave of his elegant fingers. The two of them laugh as the pink-and-green glittery elephant trumpets loudly and scampers in a rather un-elephant-like way out the door. Then Magnus kisses Madzie on the forehead, and clambers up to his feet to press a lingering kiss on Alec’s mouth. They both smile into it.

Jace is lounging over on Magnus’ gazebo with the beautiful bronze-skinned werewolf, Maia, who saved what’s left of the Praetor Lupus. They don’t touch and appear to be in the middle of an argument, but Maryse doesn’t miss the way his gaze warms just looking at her and the way Maia’s smiling up at him, her body canting towards his like a magnet drawn to its counterpart. If a gang of Kuri demons scuttled their way into this loft, Maryse doubts the two of them would even notice.

Isabelle is trying to convince Clary and Simon to let her join in on the cooking. She is as bright and striking as she’s always been, a brilliant flame in the middle of the room that everyone can’t help but be drawn to. The smartest shadowhunter of her age—at least no one dares to tell Maryse any different.

Clary’s grown into herself, a mini-Jocelyn if Maryse ever saw one, all heart and passion with only a few of the hard edges her mother’d had at that age. Simon still talks a mile a minute, and has taken to wearing his spectacles even though he doesn’t need them as a vampire. A guitar hangs over his back, no doubt, he’ll play later when everyone’s too full of food and drink to move.

They are all older and perhaps a little bit wiser. Harder, too. But, she thinks, at least they are safe and they are together, even if it’s just for _now_. Each of them has lost too much to not hold such moments preciously. She shudders, a shaky breath, and runs her fingers across Luke's knuckles to grasp the warm, strong-veined hands at her waist. 

It may not be exactly the promise she envisioned making but she is happy to see this through.

 

 

# 2

She stands in front of the silent brother. She doesn’t know his name, but he’s performed every single marriage rite for eight generations of Lightwoods, and Robert’s parents were adamant that he would perform theirs.

It’s a simple wedding. Robert hadn’t wanted much fuss. And the Truebloods don’t have the kind of wealth that could insist this celebration take place any other way.

Her dress is ivory chiffon with bell-sleeves over a golden shift that clings to her full curves, sexy without being too-much. Mother hadn’t really approved of it but she’d been forced to concede when Jocelyn had declared this style was fashionable for young hunter brides around the world.

When she says her vow, steady and sure, drawing the marriage rune carefully on Robert’s left arm, the sting of the one he drew on hers still there, she grins.

During the final blessing, she lifts her eyes up to catch Robert’s but he stares solemnly at the silent brother the whole time.

 

 

 

# 7

“Oh, by the Angel!” the words ripped out of her in a high-pitched scream. She grabbed at the short hairs at the nape of Luke’s neck and arched up, offered her cunt to his hungry mouth. He took it and then some.

Maryse had somehow forgotten how good this felt. _God, when was the last time she—_

All coherent thoughts flew out the window when Luke’s plush lips wrapped around her clit and sucked, his beard burning at her inner thighs, and then she was coming hard and fast. Clawing at his bare shoulders even as she pushed him away, the pleasure almost this side of _too_ -much.

He pulled back from between her legs, pressed a damp trail of kisses along her hip, her underbelly, her sternum to the curve of her breasts before he sat up on his haunches. He glanced up at her, his dark eyes flashing emerald in the dark, the desire rolling off of him made her thighs fall open instinctively. A minute ago, she’d thought she’d had enough but the way he was watching her now made her want to offer herself to him again and again until they were both too sated to move or think.

Their awkward friendship had been leading up to this moment for months. The first tentative steps towards reconciliation and repair. The odd ‘meeting’ or two ( _dates_ is what they’d been but neither of them had known it at the time and by the time they’d realised it, they didn’t bother to name them) that turned into a regular _thing_. Late at night at that bar by his precinct where they’d chat over cognac or red wine (for her) and beer or whiskey (for him) until all hours. Then dinner a few times at his warm, book-laden apartment in Brooklyn, where she watched him move around the kitchen with a hypnotising and thoroughly masculine grace, and listened to all his stories of absurd and often violent cases, the struggles of leading the pack, being a father to his increasing brood of adopted children. And he listened to her, too. Complaining about Clave politics, worrying over her kids, trying to find her place in the Clave and succeeding only half the time.

Then, of course, there was the war they were all doing their best to survive even as it felt like they _just_ kept losing and losing. The pain and grief didn’t get any easier to bear not even now, months after. But, with Luke, breathing didn’t feel so heavy and impossible.

Every single moment had brought them here to this moment where she lay splayed on his living room couch in nothing but the pewter-grey suede heels she’d come in on earlier—he’d specifically asked her to keep them.

“You good?”

She couldn’t help but smile. Only Luke could give her the best orgasms she’d had in over a decade (possibly her life) and then ask her if she was ‘good’.

“I don’t think I have the vocabulary to tell you how ‘good’ I feel right now, Luke.”

He chuckled, a sheen of pride there. Delight. _Want_.

She bit her lip, tasting the salt of her own sweat. Skimming her left hand up her hip, she closed her eyes as if to relive the memory of what he’d just done to her body. Everything was tingling, nerve-endings she didn't even know she had firing up. She touched her stomach, soft giving flesh over muscle. Earlier, she’d been a tiny bit shy about that, worried he’d look at her body, covered in old scars and runes, telling the story of her life, and find it wanting. But he’d banished any such fears quickly.

Maryse brought both her hands up to cup her breasts, her nipples tender and swollen from his tongue and the scrape of his beard. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel him watching her, and it struck her how much she liked being watched by him. Taken by him. Possessed by him.

It had been scary at first. A fragile hanging moment after she’d craned her neck to kiss the corner of his mouth, when she’d thought for sure he’d push her away. But he hadn’t. He’d turned his head just so and caught her mouth in the kind of kiss that would leave even the most level-headed woman breathless and begging. Then he’d stepped back and started to unbutton his shirt, his eyebrow quirked at her. A dare—testing to see if she’d be able to keep up with him.

She had. But only just.

Maryse loved this feeling. She didn’t know what to call it, but she wanted to hold onto it as long as possible.

Cracking one lid open and then the other, she glanced at his ridiculously beautiful cock, thick and hard, curving slightly left and leaking pre-cum— _for her_. Nibbling on her lower lip, she raised her eyebrow up, an echo of his earlier dare. “Is that all you’ve got, Detective?”

He snorted, and then his hands followed the path hers had taken minutes before. Raising her arms above her head, he took himself in hand, and dragged the tip of his cock along her clenching centre. Maryse shivered, jerked her hips upwards, desperate to take him in. And then he proceeded to show her just how much he had to give.

_Raziel, did he show her._

 

 

 

# 6

Luke opens the door after her third brash knock. He’s dressed in nothing but a scuffed pair of jeans, clearly having just hopped out of a shower.

The greeting on his mouth fades when he notices her.

She thinks, she must look crazy, face haggard with tears, all the broken parts inside of her exposed for him and anyone else to see.

She can’t breathe. And it’s why the sound coming out of her is so ugly. _Death_.

“Max,” she chokes out.

He doesn’t say anything, he just steps out and tugs her close, lets her lean into him, feel the steady thrum of his heart through his shirt and the rhythmic _in-out-in-out_ of him pulling air into his lungs and pushing it out again, and she tries to focus on that. Maybe if she focuses, she can recall out how to do it herself.

The city beyond these walls, this building, ticks on unwitting. They stand there for angel knows how long, Luke rocking her, gingerly, as though she’s made of shattered glass.

However long it is, it’s long enough for her to remember.

 

# fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and feedback is ever a gift!
> 
> Read this in Russian here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/7220026! Thank you for translating it!


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